Leisure and Global Housing Crises

Affordability of housing in many countries means home ownership is simply a pipedream for most and rent levels out of reach without high earning jobs in advanced liberal democracies. Traditional leisure technologies such as caravans (travel trailers), tents, campvans, and places such as parks, urban liminal zones as well as mobile home parks and small holiday dwellings have become standard ways for working people get by. Mobile lives, once the domain of pleasure travel must compete with Romani, urban authorities, park wardens and landowners. Belonging is disrupted, not by job mobility but by housing affordability. Expansion of high density and shrinking living spaces cram leisure locales into retail clusters and untouchable green spaces. In many global locales, housing is fluid, temporary and squalid with no way out due to abject poverty, armed conflict and refugees. Papers are invited that explore relations between leisure and housing e.g in urban and rural areas; marginal economies, conflict zones, mobile technologies; social class, gender, ethnic relations and other dimensions of social experience at civil political and interpersonal levels. Belonging 'in place' is indeed a serious problem in a brutal 21st century.